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He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

His name was Ernie, and I knew him many years ago when I was first in the ministry. I tended to make the same mistake with Ernie. When I saw him I asked him how he was keeping. His rather dour reply, in a thick Liverpudlian accent was, ‘I’m not keeping brother, I’m being kept!’

We have seen in the opening verses that we are set apart to belong to Jesus and called to live holy lives. Thankfully, we don’t have to do this in our own strength or we would fail. We rely on the keeping power of God.

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. 7 And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a true and faithful teacher of the Gentiles.

Since I last wrote one of these Bible thoughts, most of us in the U.K. have experienced a collective sense of bereavement. We knew that our Queen, who was 96, could not go on forever, and the signs of increasing frailty were clearly there to be seen. Still, it was hard to believe that she was  impermanent, even though we knew she had to be. Now we are living with shock and sadness, and we can’t believe she has gone. For many of us, she was always there.

In the days after her passing, I felt it important to leave aside our Corinthian devotions for a day and turn to 1 Timothy 2:1-7. When Paul says “first of all”  in verse 1, he is emphasising the priority of prayer in public worship, and in particular intercession for our leaders. He wants us to understand that God’s heart is for them to be saved, and that Jesus came into the world for this very purpose. He wants everyone to be saved, and this includes our leaders. Furthermore, these prayers can help to shape a culture in which the gospel can continue to be freely preached.

So at this time, I’m sure we recognise the need for renewed commitment to pray for our new King, Charles 111, and our new Prime Minister, Liz Truss – “and all those in authority”.

God save the King!

I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.

There must be a godly way to encourage others – to acknowledge their giftedness; a way which glorifies God while at the same time honouring and affirming the individual concerned. It seems to me that Paul points the way in his letters. We have much to learn from him.

Alistair Begg told a lovely story. He said when he was a young boy in Scotland, he was in the local sweet shop one day when a lady came in and complimented him about something. (It may have been a comment about how he looked). When she left the shop, the owner looked at him and said, “Flattery is like perfume sonny. You can sniff the bottle, but you mustn’t swallow the contents.”

…to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people…

Throughout the New Testament we see the interplay between what we might call the positional and the practical. It is found in the above expression:

‘Those sanctified in Christ Jesus’ points to the positional aspect. We are separated to belong to Jesus. This is our position;

‘Called to be his holy people’: is the practical outworking of the positional. We have to be who we are; live up to our privileges.

As we read this letter we can easily see that the Corinthians did not. Neither do we. We are not what we were, but neither are we what we want to be, or what we are one day going to be. We can be encouraged that God did not write them off because of their failures , and we count on His mercy towards ourselves also. However, we cannot read the Corinthian correspondence without seeing that holiness matters. We cannot live any longer for ourselves. The Lordship of Christ has serious implications. One of them is that we seek to do whatever He says. We are not our own. We have been bought at a great price, and we are to glorify God in our bodies (6:19,20).

“And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” (2 Corinthians 5:15).

The positional and the practical are sometimes referred to as the indicative and the imperative. As someone observed: “Every imperative of Scripture (what we are to do for God) rests on the indicative (who we are in our relationship with God), and the order is not reversible.”

We can only become holy in life because in the first place we have been set apart to belong to Christ.

…together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours:

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Satan always hates Christian fellowship; it is his policy to keep Christians apart. Anything which can divide saints from one another he delights in.”C.H. Spurgeon.

How beautiful is the story of the disciple, Ananias, going to visit the newly converted Saul of Tarsus and calling him, “Brother…” (Acts 9:17). There is a kinship between all those who own Jesus as Lord. You don’t have to agree with them on every single point. Their churchmanship may differ from yours. You may not particularly like their style of worship. But you have a common experience of “Grace” and so there can be “peace” between you.

The truth is this: the church of God is found not only “in Corinth”, but it is “everywhere” there are people who confess Jesus as Lord. The church is much bigger and wider than my local expression of it. When you go somewhere else and bump into a fellow-Christian, doesn’t it make your heart jump with excitement? You don’t particularly obsess over the denomination they are linked to. (At least, I hope you don’t). You are just thrilled to meet a brother and sister in Christ; and that is exactly how it should be. You share much more in common than any trifling differences there may be.

To the church of God in Corinth,

It was vital that there should be a church in Corinth.

It is always essential that our ‘Corinths’ should have local churches.

It is vital that ‘ Corinths’ should have praying churches (and as we saw yesterday, here were people calling on the Name of the Lord).

In the ancient world Corinth was a by-word for immorality. In fact, there was a saying: ‘to Corinthianise’, or ‘to play the Corinthian.’ It referred to having an immoral lifestyle. But a church had been planted in the moral sewer that was Corinth. These believers were not perfect. They were flawed. The truth is they still had a lot of Corinth on them (and in them). But they’d had a good old gospel dousing down (See 1 Cor 6:11), and they were in the process of being changed. They were “called to be…holy” (verse 2).

The common Greek word for the church: ekklesia, refers to a ‘called out’ people. In one sense, the Christians were called out of Corinth even as they still had to live there. But they were God’s people; they belonged to Him, and were called to live out their true identity. Yes, they were still “in Corinth”, but the greater reality is that they were “in Christ Jesus”.

Prayer: Lord, I pray that my life in Christ will shape and inform how I live in my Corinth.

2 To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours:

For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:12, 13)

Paul writes about a double-calling. First of all, our Christianity begins with the call of Christ. This is of paramount importance. It precedes our birth even, occurring in eternity past. But as far as we are concerned, we are converted when we call upon the Name of the Lord and are saved (Romans 10:13). Like drowning men and women, we recognise that we cannot resist the undertow of sin. It is taking us down. All we can do is to call on the One who offers to rescue us and is able to do it. We relax in His arms by faith and trust Him to carry us to safety. But calling on the Name of the Lord is not just where Christian experience begins, it is also how it continues – in prayer. It is where the race begins and how it is run. Leonard Ravenhill commented that ‘ The church that is not praying is playing.’ To say we believe in God, and yet be prayer-less is a form of practical atheism. After 44 years in pastoral ministry – although now retired – I find myself scratching my head over how many Christians seem to pay only lip service to the importance of prayer. It is a source of sadness and great concern to

 me. As someone said, ‘The greatest cause of unanswered prayer is unoffered prayer.’

What might happen today, I wonder, if all Christians were to devote themselves to prayer, as at the very beginning (Acts 2:42)?

 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes…

Paul refers to Sosthenes as his ”brother” or ”friend” (as ‘The Message’ puts it). To be a true friend or brother to someone else is no small ministry. Who is God calling you to befriend just now? Do you know? Why not ask Him?

Paul was a team player. He mentions numerous individuals by name throughout his New Testament letters. (You just have to think, for example, of the last part of Romans). Jesus sent out His disciples on mission two by two. Paul seemed to regularly follow this pattern – sometimes his teams were even larger. But he recognised his need of the help, support, gifts and ministries of others. He saw the church as a ‘body’ made up of many necessary parts. He did not believe in unemployed church membership.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says:

⁹ Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labour:
¹⁰ If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.
¹¹ Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
    But how can one keep warm alone?
¹² Though one may be overpowered,
    two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Thought: What might be possible for the Kingdom if you were to team up with someone else? What could you do together, ‘in Christ’, that you could not alone? Who might be your ‘Sosthenes’?

Just a heads up – this is not going to be a ‘typical’ introduction to a Bible book. It’s more of a word of explanation. In this next season, we are going to start to work through Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. I say start because we may not finish. I’m not going to be in any hurry, and there may come a point where I sense the wind change direction and feel that we need to set our sails to move elsewhere. But 1 Corinthians will be our point of departure.

I believe Max Lucado, in one of his books, said something like this, ‘Every day, read in your Bible until something hits you, and then carry that thought with you through the day.’ This is going to be my approach to First Corinthians, and may I encourage you to do the same. Also, I welcome your comments/insights. You should be able to share them whether you are reading from the ‘Home Thoughts from Abroad’ site or the ‘A date with Jesus’ Facebook page. I can’t promise that I will always be able to reply, but I will try to as much as possible. May God bless us as we embark on this journey together.

Prayer: Thank you Lord for your Word. I confess I cannot understand it apart from the help of the Holy Spirit. So I look to you for insight and understanding. Thank you Lord.